


Make it look like you don't mean it

by andalucite



Category: Leverage
Genre: & working through them in weird ways, Gen, Parker & Eliot-centric, Parker is also an abuse survivor, Parker is neurodivergent, Pre-OT3, first fic!!, weird manifestations of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andalucite/pseuds/andalucite
Summary: Parker makes eye contact with Eliot like the business end of a gun, cool and unrelenting.--Parker doesn't get a lot of things about her new team but she gets hiding things from them the way Eliot is-- until she realizes he isn't doing it on purpose, that he is hiding things from himself.That she doesn't get at all.





	Make it look like you don't mean it

The first time Parker pokes Eliot in one of his broken ribs it looks an awful lot like an accident; he is half-heartedly playing keep-away with a bag of gummy frogs that are rightfully hers because she was the one who stole them from Hardison and she is whole-heartedly intent on winning the game, poking him in the temple and shoulder and forearm and, eventually, his ribs.

It is victory through sheer annoyance and carelessness when he only semi-intentionally drops the frogs in favour of a quickly-aborted reach to defend his weak spot. Spots, probably, she knows there are more; more specifically, she knows his ribs are broken, not bruised like he is claiming ‘cause it don’t hurt that much, he doesn’t need medical attention or a wrap or ice or heat or anything.

It’s fine. Whatever. Pay attention to the briefing.

Parker is paying attention: to the briefing, to Hardison’s fine-edged frustration at how much work actually goes in to what ends up being a few colourful slides easily digestible by a group of preschoolers (them, the crew), to Nate’s evil mind churning away to craft plans A thru Z, to Sophie’s perfect winged eyeliner (probably done in a taxi on the way over, requiring rock-steady hands under pressure that translates well to being rock-steady under different kinds of pressure), and to Eliot.

Eliot, who after the last job requiring him to be jumped by a swarm of jumped-up goons, is fine and has been all week. So it’s an accident when she pokes him in his totally-fine and not-broken ribs that are, in fact, broken. Her smirk is a distraction and all sadistic glee when Eliot glowers at her from beneath heavy brows and actually growls a little.

Her smirk says she knows that it hurt more than he was anticipating from some petty tug-of-war and she thinks it’s funny. At this point, Nate is glaring equally at them and the mark’s ugly mug up on Hardison’s six screens, so Parker settles back with her gummy frogs with an innocent look.

Who, me?

She may not be able to read people or be people like normal, but hell if she can’t tuck what she actually wants out of sight with a pickpocket’s sleight of hand and see anger building a mile away. Habits of a lifetime make her safer, and more importantly, a better thief. Also, Eliot is now leaning back in his chair in a just-chillin’-definitely-not-taking-the-weight-off-his-broken-ribs way, which is.

Well, that’s what she wanted in the beginning, isn’t it?

\---

Parker is not totally sure that Eliot realizes when he is in pain. That’s understandable in the middle of a job; she loses herself into the free fall madness of leaping from a building or the sparking joy of dancing with a laser grid on a touch-sensitive floor just as much as the next girl, making little details like a tweaked ankle or a knife-cut shoulder fade to nothing.

But.

After?

When a tweaked ankle left untreated makes running for her life should it be necessary a gamble of pain against endurance? Parker knows better than to ignore her body, vital as it is to stealing things. She and Eliot have so much in common sometimes, so much that the others (Hardison) just don’t understand, she kind of thought that they would have this in common too: ignore any and all pain on the job, then retreat to lick their wounds in private. When it’s safe.

Eliot, from what she can tell, is skipping the vital licking-wound-in-private step.

Theory: Eliot does not realize when he is in pain. Result: he doesn’t give himself the medical attention he, as their hitter, so obviously and vitally needs. Solution? Parker can steal anything without anyone noticing—so clearly all she needs to do is steal his pain from where he does not notice it and leave it out somewhere he will.

So yes, the first time she pokes him in his broken ribs no one but her seems to be aware of, it looks like an accident.

When he doesn’t break her fingers for the invasion, just glares and growls, she stops making it look like an accident.

\---

Eliot walks out of the job with a strained knee. Parker knows this because he did not know anyone could see him limp out of the warehouse where he had left an easy dozen unconscious men and had therefore allowed himself to limp. This weakness disappeared like smoke when she strategically makes noise before appearing.

Now, in the chaotic middley bit of a con almost going sideways and Nate ruffling through plans H thru L in the other room with Sophie talking him down from plan M, Parker reaches over subtle as a snake and prods Eliot’s kneecap probably hard enough to leave a bruise itself. He grunts, hard, like he’s been hit, and goes tight and on-guard around his eyes. Hardison squawks, offended and shocked on Eliot’s behalf.

Parker makes eye contact with Eliot like the business end of a gun, cool and unrelenting. She makes like she is playful and teasing and too abnormal to know when she’s crossed a boundary and Hardison starts lecturing about personal space and hurting people not being okay, lil mama, you gotta leave Eliot alone.

Eliot has faced down guns enough, been a gun enough to know she’s not playing the way it seems. He looks briefly confused, almost betrayed by her attack. That’s okay; she’ll take the loss of trust if he will just admit that it hurts, because so far her working theory is looking pretty solid.

She prods his knee again, laughing just-so when he tells her to quit it, that hurts, you don’t just poke people in bruises like that, Parker, seriously, were you raised in a barn.

The brace under his pants when they leave the apartment for plan L is not visible unless you’re looking for it, which she is, with smug cat-like satisfaction.

It’s almost as good as cracking a safe upside-down.

\---

Sophie and Hardison think there is something wrong with her. Nate does too, of course, but he accepts her apparent sadism as natural as his own sadism and just ignores it (like he does his own). Sophie pulls her aside after a tickle fight gone dirty when Parker had not aimed for ticklish spots but broken ones until Eliot had stormed off muttering about insane, feral thief people who had never something-something-something, what mattered was that he stormed off in to the bathroom where the medkit was.

But.

Sophie: lecturing about the hard work that Eliot puts in to protecting them as a team and how he needs to be in good condition for the next part of the con and how exacerbating his various bruises is not conducive to a happy, healthy work environment (what?) so Parker, sweetie, you have to play more gently. Not everyone is as unbreakable (read: insane) as you.

Eliot isn’t unbreakable any more than she is, and they aren’t bruises they are hairline fractures and sprains and dislocations and so much worse and no one, not even Eliot, seems to notice unless she draws attention to it in a very visceral, painful way. Parker keeps what she wants out of sight unless absolutely necessary, however, so she takes the lecture for what it is and makes no promises outside of a wicked too-wide grin that has Sophie groaning into her palms.

It's okay.

Hardison is harder. He gets hurt on jobs sometimes, too, and is always a big baby about it, needing help and extraction immediately if possible or attention and sympathy if not. He calls a lot of attention to his weak spots, his hurt places. Sometimes it blows Parker’s mind that he’d rather Sophie tape his busted nose in the middle of the living room than ice it himself in the dead of the night, everyone else unawares.

He is… soft? It’s not weakness, she doesn’t think, watching him over time. Hardison is soft because he can be, hacker not hitter, burrowed in server basements not back flipping off stairwells. Soft, and she feels… something… about that, not sure what, and that makes his frowning concern hit harder than Sophie’s hostile-work-environment lecture.

Like, why is she intentionally—because it is now very clearly intentional—hurting Eliot when he already takes so much hurt? It isn’t funny like she seems to think it is, how would she like it if someone kept hitting her where it hurt? She keeps her breath even like she’s beating a motion sensor and shrugs, clueless, why does it matter if it hurts? Eliot hasn’t told her to stop (not really) and it is kind of funny anyways, and she’d do it to Hardison if she thought he’d let her (if he needed it).

No one walks away from those conversations satisfied.

It’s okay.

\---

Eliot has—probably noticed, Parker thinks, what she is doing and more importantly why. Nothing about the dynamic she has set up changes, but this time when she goes in to poke him in the neck-shoulder-ribs, one-two-three quick as she can be, he doesn’t look at her with hurt in his eyes and she doesn’t stare him down.

Better, she feels bandages on his shoulder and around his ribs, meaning that this time he caught his own hurt before she did and took care of it.

This time, her smile is less manic and broad as she settles back against his (uninjured) arm and sighs deeply enough for Eliot to feel it. Hardison is giving them an odd look—he’s noticing more about her, about them, more attuned to their things he doesn’t understand—from the middle of his lecturing, but that’s all right.

Parker got what she wanted.


End file.
